HOME RULE AND THE PEERS
IF AN ELECTION OCCURRED ? If, before passing the Home Rule Bill under the automatic provisions of the Parliament Act, the Liberal Government were to concede a General Election on the Home Rule issue, and if that General Election again endorsed it, would the Unionists then support the Bill? Tins question, which is being discussed at Home, presumes a large amount of generosity on the part of the Liberals. The same cannot be said of the Unionist official reply, which is reported as follows :—: — Lord Curzon, speaking for Lord Lansdowne, said that "in the event of a General Election going to indicate substantial approval of the measure, he will be prepared to advise your lordships to go into Committee to endeavour to remove the blemishes and undesirable features by which it is characterised, and to ask all parties of the House to join in the endeavour to shape, if possible, a more palatable measure." " Substantial approval," " remove the blemishes," and " more palatable measure," are all phrases that permit of a maximum of political contortion. But the Unionist reply is made to look still more peculiar by Mr. J. A. Spender, editor of the Westminster Review (Liberal), who writes : " If we went to an election this year, and won, we should under the Parliament Act get our Bill at once without asking any further advice from their lordships ; but that Lord Lansdowne shonld be ignorant of the Parliament Act is merely a symptom of the general state of mind of the peers at this moment." " General " Sir Edward Carson says in effect that the Ulster Unionists are not bothering about any popular will except their own popular will. He says : " All I can say is that we stand for the King and the Constitution, by which I mean government by the Imperial Parliament and the Imperial Executive, and I deny the right ol any Parliament or any Government before or after twenty elections to drive us out of the position to which we were born."
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19130906.2.134
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 59, 6 September 1913, Page 10
Word Count
338HOME RULE AND THE PEERS Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 59, 6 September 1913, Page 10
Using This Item
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Evening Post. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in